Remember watching the news here in Europe, there was so much propaganda that I didn’t know what was truth or lies. They said a bloodbath was sure to happen and that the whites would all be murdered. Was so worried about my family and friends that I just had to get there.
Overdrew my account when my pay came in, new that if I was quick enough I could withdraw all my salary at least twice in two different ATM’s. Got a ticket to South Africa the next day and was off.
Would surprise my grandmother by suddenly arriving at the back door with a bottle of scotch whisky, just out of the blue. We would have a few drinks together and a good chat. She was always good towards me, lately i found a lot of letters that she had written to me while on the ships. Believe she really loved me in her way, just that I never saw it. Never gave her any love back, didn’t know what love was or how.
Well as usual I was very restless and had to get out again, Steven was one of my very best and oldest friends that I had grown up with, we had many of the same interests and one of them was smoking ‘dagga’ , that is marijuana in Cape Town.
I hadn’t been there for some years and now the scene had changed, dagga was not enough unless it was mixed with buttons ‘mandrax’. A new high, just more dangerous. To get hold of them we had to go into Grassy Park and that was over the border into the colored districts of the Southern suburbs. A very dangerous place for whites, but in a way we never thought of the dangers, just wanted to score. We also had friends/contacts in these places so much of it was knowing the right people.
Life was like a party, and we felt like we were on top all the time. One time we got into a lot of trouble where I ended up in prison and Steven was found beaten up in Grassy Park. Not sure how he got out with his life in tact. Some years later Steven died in a motor cycle accident, must say that I really do miss him. He was really a very good and lovable person, seems so unfair that he is gone.
Once I was asked by a psychologist how much I had smoked in my life, so I told him without exaggeration that I could have filled up his hole office. In Cape Town smoking was an art form, here in the picture you can see how we did it back then.
In Europe it is mostly hashish, amphetamine and the miss use of pills and so on. It was a different high, and the culture was very different to that in which I’d grown up in.
Am so greatfull to God that I’m finished with that lifestyle and all that it involved. Was really sunken deep, but didn’t know at that time. I liked getting high from the very first time I tried it. Today more than fifty of my friends in Norway have died because of this lifestyle, and now the world wants to make it legal.
Am so glad that I never tried Heroin, had a kind of respect for it, knew that it always caused death. Was not willing to fall so low that I’d be called a junkie. Had a bit of a rastafari reputation, with one of the biggest collections of reggae music. Music was a big part of my life.